It doesn't really surprise me, the comic has that almost but not quite lost innosence quality to it. It also has the update schedule of something being written by someone with the work ethic of a 16 year-old. Oh well, I read it anyway.

Really? I was taken aback when I found out about that. Hootoo holds many talents even experienced illustrators don't have. I'm not touching the subject of the writing -she can use some more minor improvement, and I'm positive that she will given the right time. But on the art department she's really ahead of her time. It's not everyday that you find people so young with a style that is so much their own. The fact that she can also layout her panels with so much balance and elegance... This would be a find of its own, but for me knowing she's that young changes everything.

Enough of my rambling! Back on the subject, I'm glad somebody posted about this little gadget on the KeenSpace forums.

[05:32] <Dark_Tiger> Actually.... That'll take care of my desire to be an asshat.
[05:32] <abcd_z> What will?
[05:32] * Dark_Tiger is now known as KS-Roulette_Tiger
[05:33] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> The Wheel-O-Eyeforks!
[05:33] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> round and round she goes, where she stops, will be at a pissant webcomic
[05:34] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "WWW Zone" I swear I'm not making this up "Anyone want ice?" "I'll trade you my wife for it."
[05:35] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> There is only one excuse for that kind of writing, but somehow, I doubt a polar bear would do that to a person.
[05:36] * Dark has quit IRC (Quit: Moo)
[05:38] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "Elverion" Well, it's got art, something remotely resembling a plot, and panty shots. Dang, this might actually be worth the bandwidth, now what am I going to vent my spleen on?
[05:39] <Mirell> I love seeing spam to mamiller1@ualr.edu...
[05:39] <Mirell> I last used that email publically in '95
[05:40] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "Your Choice" Hey, let's let the readers decide the plot! That couldn't be the stupidest idea since the invention of the pet rock!
[05:42] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "College Zoo" Well, its ended, that's something in its favor.
[05:43] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "Interglatic Space Sherrifs" NOthing good can come of this.
[05:45] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "Demented Cisco Students" Because once again, people think that if they understand computers, they also understand everything on this earth.
[05:47] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "Sippans Serie" The comic, she makes as much sense as the title.
[05:48] * KS-Roulette_Tiger is performing to an empty room, isn't he?
[05:48] <Mirell> *crickets*
[05:49] <bbot> 10-95
[05:49] * PinkFreud has quit IRC (DeepThought.NY.US.Nightstar.Net Phoenix.NC.US.Nightstar.net)
[05:50] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "Shapes" No, and for the LAST GODSDAMN TIME writing a bunch of text and putting it next to a triangle and a square is NOT a comic.
[05:51] <bbot> 10-26, 10-99.
* Retrieving #Schlock_Mercenary modes...
[05:53] <KS-Roulette_Tiger> "Pretty Heavy" Pretty crappy too, but who am I to judge, it probably just wants to fit in.

and I've found yet another of those must-read comics. Too many times, I'll run into not BAD comics persay, but comics that are going over ground that's been already been used. A thousand comics trying to find a new joke about working in a tech center, at a toy store, something sad about being a vampire, and so on. The bad comics serve a purpose, they allow me to vent my rage, but the good ones that are boringly overdone just make me a little upset.

This one isn't like that. It's diffrent, and that counts for a lot. The fact that it's also done by a writer who can draw helps a lot too. click here -> http://faub.keenspace.com

http://eyleisia.keenspace.com/]"Eyleisia", because the web doesn't have enough crappy spritecomics.

and I've found yet another of those must-read comics. Too many times, I'll run into not BAD comics persay, but comics that are going over ground that's been already been used. A thousand comics trying to find a new joke about working in a tech center, at a toy store, something sad about being a vampire, and so on. The bad comics serve a purpose, they allow me to vent my rage, but the good ones that are boringly overdone just make me a little upset.

This one isn't like that. It's diffrent, and that counts for a lot. The fact that it's also done by a writer who can draw helps a lot too. click here -> http://faub.keenspace.com

Fallen Angels Used Books is indeed impressive. The panel layouts are sometimes a little confusing, but that's a quibble.

Quibble, quibble. You're the one that wants links to the really bad comics.

I know it's got a following already, but FAUB is the kind of comic that makes me want to spin the Wheel-O-Eyeforks. Something good, that hasn't been done to death, that I probably never would have heard of.

Oh my...I just saw some of the worst artwork ever. I just...just can't look. I have a serious deal with seeing comics with good artwork. There are just a few, just a few that I read because the plot and characters made up for the artwork, (a few being right on Keenspot).
What's worse is that it has a stupid title: Small Town Life. I live in a small town, and I'm not happy about it. I don't want to read a comic about small town life when I'm already living it. I mean, why does Keenspace let some of these things in?! It hasn't even been updated since February 2003. Why is this thing still up at all? He's left it dead for a year and maybe if he's lucky, he'll hit his super record of 2 years come February 2005. This guy also has links to "Movie Poop Shoot" and "Roger Ebert". I'll give him the link to MST3K though. At least that's more promising of him. I also do not link how he has his site set up, it's confusing and everything seems very well... squat and short.
Overall, I give it a 0.5 out of 10. For effort. Really. That and I feel very sorry for him. Damn my kindness and guilt! DAMN THEM TO HELL!

On a related note, the database this runs off of is over a year old, and I haven't seen Alphy in almost that long. If someone can get a system like this to auto-update ( I think it's based off of kspace's "guide" page which has a list of comics that have updated in the last however many days) or even just set on of these up and manually refresh the database every so often, we'd get a lot fewer page not found errors.

"HAMMER & SICKLE BISHONEN" Usually, when I mock a comic, I do it because I see potential, if not in the comic, then in the art or writing of the author. I hope that people do read my venom, and take it as a spur to do better things. If I've mocked a comic, I do it in love.
http://walkerchan.keenspace.com/

I kinda liked the "Why am I filming a flower?" one. Not exactly laugh out loud funny, but a halfway decent bit of anti-humor. This comic has three problems:

The artist really doesn't know where he wants to go with it. Note the attempts at Penny Arcade style gaming humor. It's all over the map, topic-wise. Probably caused by:

"Hey, I'll make a comic starring me & my friends" syndrome. This is curable, and HIMACSMMF sufferers can even, with sufficient effort and skill, produce good work (see: Nukees). The problem here is that "starring me and my friends" only sounds like a premise, but by itself it really isn't sufficient: it doesn't provide a focus.

The artist has very little sense of pacing. Only the "filming a flower" strip has effective pacing (since that's the most recent comic as of this writing, I consider it a good sign). Pacing a joke or a story is a skill just like drawing, and must be learned and practiced. Note that "practice" does not mean simply trying over and over, but implies some "postgame analysis".

Quote:

"HAMMER & SICKLE BISHONEN" Usually, when I mock a comic, I do it because I see potential, if not in the comic, then in the art or writing of the author. I hope that people do read my venom, and take it as a spur to do better things. If I've mocked a comic, I do it in love.http://walkerchan.keenspace.com/

It takes two people to produce this?

Every artist and every writer has potential. Unfortunately, this comic seems to have been produced to early in its creator's careers for anyone to be able to tell what kind of potential. On the plus side, I get the distinct impression that both are quite young, so there's plenty of time for them to go on to do better things.

Art has potential; progressing quickly from sub-mediocre (first strip) to competent with occasional flashes of pretty damn good. I hope this artist continues to practice and starts drawing a new comic eventually, or even possibly reboots this one from the beginning. She obviously had some good ideas, but didn't realy know how to get them out there. Criticisms:

Again, pacing. In this case, both within individual strips and throughout the plot (Rock Stars doesn't have the latter problem by virtue of not having any recognizable continuity between strips at all—it's a pure gag comic, at least theoretically). Example: the first comic (not counting the chapter head "Splash page") is a gag based on a fact that hasn't really been introduced yet (and still hadn't been at the time the comic was abandoned—it hasn't been explicitly stated what Pang's people are), and the main character's name isn't given until the second strip.

Early flashback. This is really more an example of the pacing problem, but I think it merits some discussion of its own. It seems like the intent was to have the comic focus on the adult Pang working in a bar (presumably in the modern world—see previous criticism). However, the comic jumps into a flashback to her youth very early on and hadn't returned by the time it was abandoned. Using a flashback before you're really introduced the principal players in the main narrative stream is almost always a mistake, particularly if the flashback introduces its own cast of characters.

Lack of perspective. This is most obvious in the earlier bar scenes (the bar itself has the parallel-lines problem, meaning that logically it would have to be a whole lot taller and wider at the far end than at the near end), but remains a problem through the forest scenes. Probably the cause of:

Backgroundophobia. The "drawing backgrounds is tough, so I just won't do it" cop-out. This is, fortunately, not chronic—she seems more inclined to draw backgrounds when the setting is outdoors—but it's a nagging flaw and it causes problems. Especially when feet are visible, the lack of an identifiable ground or horizon line makes the figures seem to float in space.

Photoshop addiction. The artist overuses stuff like blur filters and gradients. This seems to obscure rather than enhance the artist's drawing skills—just look at the difference in art quality from the last color page to the first B&W one (on the other hand, this may be partly the result of about half a month passing between the pages were drawn). Here is an example of a well-intentioned but misguided use of the blur filter: instead of giving the illusion of depth-of-field, it just causes an eye-ache. This problem seems to be a secondary cause of backgroundophobia, or at least an enabling factor (and not just for this artist): there's a tendency to just use an arbitrary gradient flood-fill for the "background" and feel that the problem of excess empty space has been dealt with.

Disembodied and missing limbs. E.g. second panel of this page, and the bottom row of this page. The former is a technique that can actually work in black & white (it's a common manga technique), but falls flat in color (and, ironically, it's partly the presence of a background that causes the problem!). The latter I can't figure out: why not draw her hands or anything below her waist, or if not why not make the panels smaller or the figure in them larger, rather than making young Pang look like an amputee?

Don't take this long and detailed list as meaning that I'm singling out this comic for abuse; it's because I found it promising enough that I thought it merited a closer look.

This is a sketchbook, not a comic, at least so far. Hard to tell how much of the sketchy quality of the art is due to lack of skill, how much is due to technical limitations (the jaggies on diagonal lines seem very oekakish), and how much is due to conscious stylistic choice (it seems to be going for a sort of Gorey/Dirge/Nightmare Before Christmas look...sort of "Victorian gothic"). The earlier, colored art seems more competent than the later black & white stuff, but the subjects are more pedestrian.

Last edited by gwalla on Tue Jan 04, 2005 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am the creator of Gafy. As such, I am FULLY aware of my lack of artistic ability. And my lack of anything resembling a sense of humor. And, you know, my lack of self esteem for doing an internet search for something I made three years ago, finding/reading your message board, and basically agreeing with you. However, as a visitor to your message boards, in true "sanctimonious outsider" fashion, I must act slightly offended that you deem it necessary to actively "seek and demean" other peoples poor attempts at humor or art. Its not as if keenspot is highly exclusive or even known for quality (Exploitation Now notwithstanding.) Not that you care, but Gafy was intended as a ridiculous sort of comentary on the state of Keenspace webcomics in general. Obviously that was in no way clear or even apparent, so it ended up every bit as bad as you claim (but probably for different reasons than "teh art sux majore.") In any case, I don't mean to distract you any further from whatever the Ballon Animals forum is about, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to notice the thing I stuck up online years ago. Incidentally, Gafy is an acronym for Go And F*** Yourself.

Oddly enough, I had to look to figure out what comic from the bowels of the netherrealms our guest was talking about. Go fig. If you want to figure it out, the comic is here and my one liner was "Ah another Jewel of Hell: "Gafy." Hey look, I can make bad mspaint art and hit copy AND paste, I'm so cool. " (grammar corrected)

For the record, I'd like to clear a few things up that were implied in Mr. Marvin's well punctuated rant on my behalf:

1. I do not like Keenspot's comics as a general rule, and haven't for years. I personally file all keenspace (and it'll be keenspace, even if they do change the name) and keenspot comics together in one bunch.

2. Your comic was bad. I wasn't looking for bad comics. Therefore, your comic was not what I was looking for. I was looking for a good comic, which doesn't describe your comic. If and when I don't find what I'm looking for (a good comic, try to keep up), I vent my spleen at what I do find (your comic).

3. You are not a special and unique snowflake. I still play KS-Roulette, although I don't post them as often as I once did and only rarely on this community. However, I have posted, in this thread alone, at least 40 reviews of comics as bad as or worse than yours. At least I didn't describe what you should do with your pencil, and not just becuse I suspect that you don't use one.

4. For the record, my worst review was given to the face of the writer, and at his request, and even then after fair warning. See point 3 about you and your snowflake.

This one doesn't really count, since I've heard of it before (it has an IRC channel with Nightstar). That said, I'm kinda getting into it. The artwork has improved from the begining (which is always a good sign) and it wasn't bad to begin with. It's a deep archive though, so all I can say is that what I've read so far seems to be coherent plot wise. We have a
Winner!

I actually used to read this one, many many years ago. I stopped when I finished puberty. This comic, while well drawn, is an excuse for panty-shots and not much else. A quick look at the last 10 comics seems to indicate that nothing's changed.

"Bebs in Videogame Land" From the looks of it, I'd say that the Keenspace Internet Bunny Assiasns found out he was doing a sprite comic, he tried to do a real comic, then realized he couldn't draw. I appluad him for realizing this.

You know, the fact that these posts actually create enough click-throughs to be note-worthy to the authors tells me two things:

1. NOBODY has heard of these comics before.

2. I really need to post these where they'd get more readers for the artists. I'd try comixepeida, but this game breaks their rules for webcomic reviews so many times it's not worth trying. Any ideas folks?

No Roulette wheel for me tonight. I just got broadband, and am celebrating by downloading 12+ gigs of completly useless programing that has neither social value nor is porn. Try it yourself if you like, Alphy has given the wheel <b>uber-coolness</b>.

[22:26:33] * Dark_Tiger notes, with some sadness, that Alphy took down the wheel of eyeforks.
[22:28:15] <Dark_Tiger> Oh well, gotta do it the ol' fashinged way I guess.
[22:28:39] * Dark_Tiger is now known as DeeT_CG-Roulette
[22:33:21] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> Aaaaaaand we're off. "Rauch vor Feuer" The first chapter is titled "Endure." I guess we're supposed to endure 7 stick-figure/filler strips in the first 9 once a week comics. http://rauchvorfeuer.comicgenesis.com#nightstar_bar Cannot send to channel (You need voice to send urls (channel is +U))
[22:33:50] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> Aaaaaaand we're off. "Rauch vor Feuer" The first chapter is titled "Endure." I guess we're supposed to endure 7 stick-figure/filler strips in the first 9 once a week comics.
[22:34:02] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> And if someone could voice me?
[22:34:08] <Boost> Smoke before Fire?
[22:34:28] * Mezzler sets mode: +v DeeT_CG-Roulette
[22:34:35] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> http://rauchvorfeuer.comicgenesis.com[22:34:52] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> I don't make 'em up, I just report the news.
[22:35:50] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> Comic Gensis Roulette, it's like Russian Roulette, only you just wish you had a gun to your head.
[22:36:34] <Mezzler> could almost call it comical suicide
[22:36:40] <Boost> sadly, that sounds both harsh AND accurate.
[22:36:45] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> "Reset" The bad news, it's a sprite comic. The good news, it ended. http://reset.comicgenesis.com/[22:40:28] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> "The Ruby Pearl" Quote of the night "And so arose the great war. Lamps were toppled. Cities burnt." The first comic says it all. http://rubypearl.comicgenesis.com/d/20050902.html[22:41:50] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> Those goddamn lamp-toppling vandels! They've destroyed all creation!
[22:44:06] <Kisara> ...
[22:46:45] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> "I Talk to the Wind" I don't think therer's enough acid in this city for me to get this one. On the gripping hand, it looks like the artist was looking for that response. http://talk.comicgenesis.com/[22:47:43] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> "IDGet" HEard of it, so it doesn't count. http://idget.comicgenesis.com/[22:56:09] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> Hmmmmm, I may have found a winner...
[23:01:22] <DeeT_CG-Roulette> "IMO Women!" Despite the title, we seem to have a slice-of-life full page humor comic. The art is well done, and reminds me of CRFH for some reason. It's a bit too soon to tell about Plot yet though, and the artist seems to have had trouble in the past with updating, but that is the only thing keeping it from getting my Tiger stripe of approval. http://imo.comicgenesis.com/

Got one for ya, though it's not on Keenspace: Ora: Desert Sun. Scratchy pencil art, lame and unnatural dialogue ("watching this shithole explode will make me moan in pleasure"), panel layout chaos, no consistency between panels (watch the protagonist do a barrel roll lying on a bed without moving from side to side), and embarassingly bad attempts at fanservice! Oh, and even crappier filler strips that aren't funny.

This was brought to my attention on 4chan's art critiques board, where the artist keeps posting new pages and then not taking any of the advice he gets (and deflecting all criticism of his insufficiencies by saying it's "his style"). Granted, /ic/ is brutal, but he keeps coming back for more.

Kastle ComicsKastle Comics is a semi-reality based comic about a girl working at a comic shop. I think that this is the millionth one and thus wins the door prize of fancy party hat and my venting on it. Personally, had I been Sarah White, I'd have held out for a cheese log, but there you go. For all that the comic tramples well trampled ground, I like it. It has something of an innocence about it that I wouldn't otherwise expect from what I believe is a college freshman-aged webcomic.

This one really reminds me, from a story standpoint, of the first couple of years of The Devil's Panties. You remember, before Breeden discovered the joys of sex and hunting men down for the purpose thereof and was rabidly protected her jailbait sisters? I suspect that this is delibrate on the artist's part, the comic does make passing mention the Jennie Breeden*, but I can't be sure.

Art wise, it's also drawn in a fairly standard clean, low background, How To Draw Manga art style but it's done fairly well. It may not be the greatest art ever to grace the web, hell it's a short step away from the velvet painting of the webcomic world, but it works and works well for a daily comedy strip.

That, by the way, is why I dug out my NS account password and posted this review. It's a daily comic that is actually updating on schedule. It is currently in its fourth month, not a long run by most standards, but it has yet to miss an update (note to people using numbered and not dated archives, you could be updating twice an hour for three years and I wouldn't say this about you)! This is a good thing, and I want to see Kastle get some readership before the artist gives in to despair and lack of readership.

* While I'm on the subject, has Jennie Breeden gotton better at cons in the last year or three? The 3 times I saw her at a con, she had an expression of unreasoning terror on her face as if she was looking into the dark maw of evil itself. And no, I wasn't wearing a sailor fuku, so shove it.

Today's edition, posted on behalf of Dark_Tiger. (Slightly edited for brevity - irrelevant lines of discussion have been cut)

<KS-Roulette_Tiger> "TEDDY BEAR ANTI-CHRIST" There's no way this will end well.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> Do not make me scroll more than 4 screen widths of blank boxes for the one-liner "your mother's a whore." TI makes me killy.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> Actually, don't make me scroll sideways at all. <KS-Roulette_Tiger> Keenspace (now comic gensis) roulette. Unlike the Russian version, you only WANT to kill yourself.<gnolam> Brevity is the soul of wit, eh?<KS-Roulette_Tiger> I think wit is more the soul of wit actually.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> That one could have been much worse, but we'll keep moving on nonetheless.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> 'Tana" Okay, I thought CG had rules agianst unmitigated hentai. Wait, I just wish they did.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> "Team Keru!" It's generally a bad sign when you've lost me less than 3 comics into your archives.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> "The Last Radiers - Chronicles of the 12th Division" Also tonight's Last Webcomic - Chronicles of Bad Writing.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> I really WANT to like this one, but I'm not sure that I can.<gnolam> Bad writing how?<KS-Roulette_Tiger> The last 3 comics in point of fact.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> This one... It's not that the author doesn't know what they're trying to do, or that they can't do it.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> They're trying to do this post apolitipic, future/fantasy Ork overlord thing.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> If it t'were done correctly, I'd love it.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> But their artistic skill, and their writing ability isn't quite up to what they're trying yet.<KS-Roulette_Tiger> Note the yet. it's early days for this comic, and it is always possible that the author will grow into their storyline.

_________________Living in a state free from the burdens of privacy and democracy since 2008-06-18.

Tonight's Wheel O' Eyeforks has been posted by Gnolam since I'm using the JIRC client and it doesn't log or really allow me to copy things, but I'd like to point out a couple of items. First Kastle Comics, the subject of my previous rant has died. I don't blame the artist for it though.

I blame you.

That's right, you. You didn't go read KC did you? Of course you didn't. So there were no crowds of rabid fans threatening the artist with imminent dismemberment when her scanner blew up and she would have to scan in things at the library. So she didn't and now although she still has all her limbs, I am without one of the cuter portions of my day. Thanks a bunch.

Second, and although I'm sure I'm not the only cause of this, but I'm pretty sure I'm the first cause of this, I'd like to point your attention towards the top right corner of the homepage for The Last Raiders. Don't worry, it won't be that horrible, today's comic is a wide angle shot: http://pash241.comicgenesis.com/

That's right a roulette wheel is now part of the CG banner! I'd like to thank all the little people, and for that matter the big people, you know who you are, who put this in there.

* Dark_Tiger ponders playing the wheel O' eyeforks.* @gnolam encourages it.<Dark_Tiger> My restraint is due to the fact that all comics I have ever declared winners have ended.<Dark_Tiger> and fear, let us not forget fear.<@Dark_Tiger> Annnd we're off:<@Dark_Tiger> "Frog Skin Boots" This one wins the award for the first comic to see a dramatic lowering of the artistic quality of the comic over its life. http://ashdesignsonline.comicgenesis.com<@gnolam> Impressive.<garou> Lowering? Now that's a change.<@Dark_Tiger> "Beyond Reality" I think this one is #23 on the list of overdone plots. About to die,, our heroes are pulled into a land of magic, fantasy, and open bars. Okay, that last one is just for me. http://orion.comicgenesis.com<@Dark_Tiger> "Kokiko" Near as I can stomach, some demons are hijacking a time machine from a company run by robots? Note to self; when building my time machine in an office building staffed by robots, do NOT hirea demon janitor. http://kokiro.comicgenesis.com/<@Dark_Tiger> It's these tips that make for a sound economy.<@Dark_Tiger> "MuZ" You know, the older I get, the less inclined I am to put up with people whining that they are not on the top of the cultural heap, expecting somehow that they are little people and at the same time the world is out to get them personally. http://rabe.comicgenesis.com<@Dark_Tiger> Our last guest got a chortle out of me on the current comic, it receives a closer look as a result (this may not be a good thing for either of us).<@Dark_Tiger> "The Mansion of E" wins 3 awards tonight. Best Way to Rip Off The Far Side "Sell it to old man Larson," most giggles of the night (including my usual reads) and the coveted Best of the Night Award.<@Dark_Tiger> AKA the Kiss of Death. It comes with 3 cents off a copy of "how to draw comics" at your local bookseller, which you do kinda need there buddy. http://mansionofe.comicgenesis.com

I'm not sure anymore how I found this one (I had posted it elsewhere, and am only now putting it here) but this one is just weird. Not for its content persay, but rather for the fact that it's crossover fanfic that's not horrible. Mind, I suspect that it'd be better if you didn't have any clue as to the universe it's pasticheing (pastiching? I dunno).

For the record, the worlds are Warhammer 40K and Sonic the Hedgehog. Yes, you read that right. No, I don't understand why. My first instinct was that the artist didn't have the artistic ability to draw humans, but there are a few sketches that imply otherwise. All that really survives from Sonic are character designs and names, and for those of you not familiar, the 40K universe is not one likely to put up with anthropomorphic critters.

I haven't finished this one (yelling "Kill the Mutant!" at my laptop each and every comic is starting to piss off the roomie) but feel free to give it a read. And someone else start doing this to themselves.